Laura Lippman wants to make this clear -- Wilde Lake High School is not the model for the fictional Glendale High School.

"Glendale is soulless," she says of a major setting in her 2005 crime novel, "To the Power of Three."

Three girls were shot, two fatally, in that girls' bathroom at Glendale High, which Lippman sees as "kind of antithetical to Wilde Lake."

A graduate of Columbia's Wilde Lake High herself, Lippman says she's often asked if there's a Glendale/Wilde Lake connection.

There is a small one, she acknowledges. A character in her book calls Glendale High a "sick building" that should be torn down and rebuilt. Wilde Lake High was torn down and rebuilt in 1994.

Now a resident of the Federal Hill neighborhood in Baltimore, Lippman is returning to Columbia as a featured guest artist at the Columbia Festival of the Arts June 23. She said it's likely she'll read from her new novel, "Life Sentences," at a wine-and-cheese reception being sponsored by the Howard County Poetry and Literature Society.

The novelist, who spent her girlhood in the Dickeyville neighborhood of west Baltimore, was in Columbia only three years, living with her family in the Cove Apartments in Wilde Lake. She started in 10th grade at Wilde Lake High and graduated in 1977. After graduation, her family moved back to Baltimore.

While attending the school, she was captain of the "It's Academic" team, which went to the Baltimore regionals, losing its final game to Oakland Mills. She believes it was the most successful team that Wilde Lake High has ever produced.

To this day, she calls the Columbia school an important step in her development as a writer.

"There was a lot of emphasis on independent study and we did some unusual things. I attempted to adapt a book as a musical. I wrote short stories," she notes.

"I got a lot of leeway (in high school). The English department gave me all the encouragement in the world."

Who is she still in touch with from high school?

"I haven't been so good at keeping up," she says.

However, she volunteers at a Baltimore soup kitchen, where she works with Jerry Cripe, the father of her date for senior prom, Tim Cripe. Also, she had dinner with classmate Andra Rose during her most recent book tour.

Lippman returned around Memorial Day from Australia, where she toured for the first time as part of the promotion for her new novel, "Life Sentences."

"I was really gratified how many people knew my work."

Perhaps it shouldn't have come as such a surprise. Her novel "Every Secret Thing" has been optioned for the movies by actress Frances McDormand, the Oscar-winning star of "Fargo." Lippman did not write the script, but she says she has read it and was pleased. Still, it's not quite ready to go before the cameras.

"There needs to be money raised," she observes.

Still, the project already has a big star and director attached, although she declines to name them at this time.

Lippman was for many years a reporter for The Baltimore Sun, and began writing crime fiction novels while still on the Sun staff. Her books feature a tenacious private investigator named Tess Monaghan, a former reporter for the fictional "Beacon-Light." Lippman's novels are nearly all set in Baltimore and feature a wealth of insider color and detail. Example: Her dog is named Esskay.

Several of her novels are inspired by real-life criminal cases, including the one she is writing now for publication next year.

"There is an old, old case that is clearly the influence for the book I'm writing now, but I'm not going to talk about it explicitly."

Here are clues she is willing to share, however: It is set in Baltimore County, Virginia and West Virginia.

"I have changed it so much I believe it is unrecognizable, except for one detail," she adds, taking a significant breath before revealing, "One of the victims may still be alive and living in the area."

Laura Lippman will read and discuss her work at the 2009 Columbia Festival of the Arts, in partnership with the Howard County Poetry and Literature Society, Tuesday, June 23, 7-9:30 p.m. It will be held in the Rouse Company Foundation Student Services Hall, Room 400, Howard Community College. Tickets are $30.

---

user comments (0)